Mary

I think I've slept about 20 hours this weekend, and I'm starting to feel caught up on sleep. Yesterday, after I finally woke up, Josh plopped me down in front of his computer and made me play Portal, which was pretty fun. And in the mean time, he made breakfast, cleaned the apartment, and made dinner. Aww. I feel a lot less stressed for having relaxed all day, and for the apartment being so much cleaner. I think today, since it's supposed to get up to like 42 out, we are going hiking... provided one of us actually finds somewhere interesting to go.

Portal is a really neat game. I'm crap at using the controls in first person shooter games, but for the most part it doesn't matter in this game. There were only a couple places where my clumsiness made things slow, but since there were no bad guys to shoot me, it didn't really matter. The narration is absolutely hilarious too. The puzzles were fun, but for the most part not all that hard... there were several that I got stuck on and decided, "I'll do something silly because that will be entertaining while I try to think of a solution" and the next thing I knew I was done with the level... because that silly thing WAS the solution. Anyway, I'm looking forward to finishing the game tonight.

At D&D last night, we caught a genie. Since the gods of random stat generation made me the skill-monkey character with the best charisma in the party, I got my charisma seriously pumped and then got to use the scroll to call the genie. Josh bound it to our plane. Kristin made a circle of protection to hold it in. And again with the charisma, skill monkey-ness, pump-ness, and intimidating eye-patch, I got to intimidate it and tell it to grant us 3 wishes... and since genies are telepathic, I actually got to talk to it and had my first opportunity to actually say what's in my user icon while being in character. (Except for the whole thing of now having more levels of Monk than of Rogue, but whatever.)

( And I proceed to talk about related D&D stuff )

Relatedly, but unrelated to the game of D&D specifically, our apartment is all nice and clean. I enjoy having people come visit us for many reasons, but one of them is definitely how nice and clean we get our apartment... and enjoying it afterwards.

- While Active, your Fighting Style causes your slam attack to inflict piercing damage and to inflict 2 points of Constitution damage.
- While Active, your Fighting Style provides any bonuses it gives to your slam attack to any attack you make with any weapon.

That is so broken (the bobcat monk has 6 natural attacks...), but so hard to think of anything else when it's an option...

Is 3rd edition the "entitlement edition" of D&D?

I deserve that mithral shirt! I'm starting at 8th level, I've earned it. When I lived in my parents' campaign, I was 8th level and I had a mithral shirt--I deserve it!

An entitlement edition for the entitlement generation???

There is a Feat called, "We Few, We Happy Few" and is described as follows: "Following a 1 minute speech, you may make a Perform (oratory) check. Any ally who listened to the whole speech and understood it may use this check in place of his/her next Will save. If not used within 10 minutes, the effect dissipates.

...and you get a +4 bonus if you have no lips, because I say so.

My character died today. Thanks to... well, I think I'll pass on counting the ways, but I think she may be sufficiently pissed at sufficiently many party members (including and especially the party member who is was her lover, Frole, who is being played by Josh) that her spirit wont be willing to return. I'm not completely sure about that though, but I can say for sure that if she does return, her relationship with Frole will definitely be over... now there's an interesting in-game/out-of-game potential dynamic: husband and wife with no real-world experience with break ups playing a pair of ex-lovers in campaign. Hmmm, will have to think on which would be a better way of taking revenge on Frole. Of course, what happens if my character's spirit does choose to return, and whether or not my character's spirit has the option to return, will depend on the party even being able to find a way to bring my character back--they are in a strange country, with strange people, little magic, and my character was the only in-party character with the ability to do it. Not to mention that the party doesn't even have near enough gold, so they would have to find someone willing to do it out of the goodness of his or her heart.

Also somewhat pissed out-of-game at Josh for having suggested not only that the DM flat out kill my character, but also coming up with a method to actually do so. Though I suppose it is only a game, and the DM might have thought of it on his own anyway... though I'm thinking not as he's had plenty of opportunities to do similar things throughout the campaign and never has before.

I suppose I should admit that my character's death is partly my fault--I could have, and perhaps should have, insisted that the party wait while she swapped out a spell that was clearly going to be useless for another flame strike. Though that would have taken a while and I'm not at all sure the party would have gone for it... and my character wasn't too keen on it since her lover was further down the hall needing to be rescued because he was an idiot. But then again, maybe even that wouldn't have helped--the guys near her would have been taken out faster, but if the combat had still proceeded with her getting left behind with the ranged folks and a different few remaining enemies a few rounds earlier, it still would have ended the same way for my character. Now there's a depressing thought.

EDIT: Anyhow, I think it might be interesting to play a different Druid. So perhaps I should instead look at this as an opportunity. Since reading Collapse, I've had a strong desire to try to fix the environmental problems that have clearly played a major role it the decline of the country in which the party currently finds itself. While my Druid was sorely lacking in the necessary abilities, I don't think it is beyond the realm of possibility for an 8th level Druid with a different Feat/Skill set to make a big difference. Indeed, I think such a Druid could find she has interest in traveling with and getting involved with the current quest of the current party... in fact, quite a strong interest seeing how dangerious of a place this is.